The medical industry has been slow to react to the many technological improvements that have taken place in the field of electronic medical records processing. Many physicians are reluctant to move away from the archaic methods they are used to and were trained in for many years. These include a medical practice that relies heavily on the manual input of patient information, the maintenance of drawers full of patients' paper records, and the handwritten entries by the physician and his or her staff. While some medical practices have upgraded their infrastructure by using electronic medical records as opposed to paper records, many of these types of systems incorporate multiple sources and require numerous functions in order for the physician and his or her staff to adequately process a patient and update their records after a patient visit.
For example, if a patient shows up at a physician's office for the first time, the staff will first have to obtain the patient's information and demographics, including their insurance carrier, past medical history, history of family illnesses, current ailments, current medication, past surgeries, test results, referring physician, etc. Once this information is obtained, the staff must first contact one source—the patient's insurance company to verify eligibility, then contact another source—to obtain credit card information from the patient, and then create a patient file. The patient can then be seen by the doctor who may or may not have immediate access to the patient's medical history. The physician, in order to examine the patient, may refer to a variety of different outdated sources and libraries in order to properly diagnose the patient's ailment. After examining the patient, the physician must then document the visit in a format that covers his subjective review, objective evaluation, assessment and plan of care. In order to do this, the physician must review the patient's past history, perhaps use medical references for evaluation, prescribe medication, place orders for laboratory work, administer a referral, and then document the services he provided in order to code the appropriate level of care for reimbursement purposes. The patient then makes final payment, schedules a follow-up visit, and receives any paperwork necessary for follow up actions (prescriptions, lab work, etc.).
Most of the actions outlines above are typically performed on independent pieces of paper of on different parts of an electronic data system. The result is a severe lack of efficiency which can lead to degradation of care or finances due to incomplete or erroneous actions throughout the cumbersome and fragmented process. Further, existing systems do not recognize repeated patterns of occurrences due to a physician's input, common or repeated medical practice behavior, or commonality in patient data of financial transactions.
Therefore, what is needed is an electronic medical records system that retrieves and stores a patient's vital information, and creates a readable, updatable, and real-time patient summary report taking into account recognizable patterns of medical practice, physician and patient procedure, in order to increase patient visit efficiency and throughput.